James Taylor - oOh!media
James Taylor, eight weeks in with his feet under the desk at the CEO’s desk at oOh!media, has started forming hypotheses on the specialist outdoor media company.
He follows in the steps of Cathy O’Connor, whom he described as “a high quality leader who was very well respected” by the market and by the teams.
“I should say Cathy also did a really magnificent and professional job of inducting me into the business,” he told AdNews.
Taylor announced full year results showing oOh!media lifted revenue 8.8% to $691.36 million despite a tougher advertising market in the second half of the year.
Adjusted underlying net profit after tax (NPAT) was up 7% to $63 million and the company declared a fully franked final dividend of 4 cents a share, up 14%.
The group impaired its New Zealand business by $30 million following the non-renewal of the Auckland Transport contract. This meant statutory NPAT was down 54% to $16.9 million.
However, the company grabbed market share in ANZ of 35%.
oOh! continues to see growth in the current year, with March quarter media revenue pacing up 7% in Australia, offset by New Zealand following the Auckland Transport loss.
The company expects OOH will continue to take revenue share from other media sectors.
Taylor sees a high quality business with room to improve.
He aims to sharpen delivery and better leverage network and scale, to move faster and operate more efficiently to convert market leadership to share growth.
This means technology modernisation will continue at pace.
“The transformation work that's well underway to provide the sales team with better tools so that they can respond more quickly to clients and more effectively,” he told AdNews.
“And there's been a lot of work in that space assisting the sales teams. We need to continue with that.
“And if you look at the other end of the business, there's a whole opportunity to to really improve the way in which -- once having once we won a contract with a landlord -- to procure the materials and assemble the asset more quickly, to get it in the ground, faster, to switch it onto the network.
“So that our wonderful sales people can sell it and to operate and maintain it more effectively.
“There's some significant opportunity there to improve. I did a lot of that work at SBS, and it generated significant outcomes for the business across a bunch of dimensions.”
From his previous role of managing director at SBS, he knows many of the major clients with oOh!.
“The good thing about the clients is they're essentially the identical set that I had at SBS,” he said.
“And I was able to get out and speak to get lots of them before I joined. And since I've joined, speaking to a significant improvement in sales engagement.
“The changes were made by Cathy in the sales structure and the talent in the team has been quite palpable.
“That's showing up in a really good momentum into the end of the year and into the start of this year.”
Taylor expects to give a more detailed outline, what he calls “ a crisper statement of strategy and approach,” at the company's AGM in May.
“I'm starting to form some hypotheses,” he said.
“It's been really wonderful to have the opportunity to present the results from last year, to start setting out a bit of a view about the place.”
A slide from Taylor's presentation to market analysts:
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